The present invention relates to structure which can be utilized with sliding doors or the like, particularly sliding doors of a piece of furniture, which device is able to permit the doors to be coplanar at closed positions thereof.
Different devices and systems are known which permit doors, windows or other similar elements, which are slid to be opened or closed, to assume a coplanar alignment at the closed positions thereof.
Usually, the most simple known devices and systems can be fitted only to a pair of sliding elements, so that when more than two sliding elements are employed in a piece of furniture, the piece must have groups of pairs of sliding elements in which each group can translate laterally in one predetermined direction.
Various devices have been designed and constructed for the same purpose, such as those described in Italian patent applications n. 41614 A/81, n. 41606 A/82, and n. 41601 A/83 filed in Italy, respectively, on Sep. 17, 1981, June 24, 1982 and Sep. 6, 1983 by the firm KAIROS S.n.C. These devices are rather complicated and thus the assembly thereof is also complicated and difficult.
Finally, these devices present considerable functional drawbacks in that the sliding operation of the doors is quite difficult and requires accurate adjustment operations.
Besides, large forces are required, particularly for starting the sliding operation. And, some of the doors tend to arrive at the end positions under rapid movements, which cause considerable impact in the furniture to such a degree that in some cases dampener devices which are also rather complicated and expensive were needed.
In addition, in order to permit reciprocal movement of the doors during the starting and final movements thereof, the vertical and lateral edges of the same doors require wide bevels which define very large angles and thereby limit the design parameters of the piece of furniture.
Finally, the door actuation for opening and closing the doors is normally accomplished by a side translation thereof in a single direction.
A further considerable drawback of the conventional sliding doors is that the door is bent with respect to the vertical when the door is hung on guide members disposed on the upper side of the piece of furniture and is rested on guide members disposed on the lower side thereof.
Such a drawback is caused by the fact that the brackets connecting the doors to the guide members are rigidly connected to the upper or lower ends of the same doors, thus forming projecting elements which transform the load due to the weight of the doors into a moment. When the doors are hung on the upper side thereof the moment tends to deform them while bending them inwardly. And, on the contrary, when the doors are resting on the lower side thereof, the moment tends to deform them while bending them outwardly.
Different devices are known to obviate this drawback by at least partly correcting for the bending. However, these devices are more or less complicated, involve a supplementary cost and above all always require accurate adjustment operations, which operations must be repeated often.